(01-09-2018 02:25 PM)Gamecock Wrote:  I got curious and decided to take a look at the six old BCS computer polls. UCF fell from 1st to 2nd in the PR Wolfe poll, which was posted here a few weeks back. UCF was 4th in the Billingsley Poll, 8th in the Massey composite, and 13th in Sagarin.

I'm still waiting on Colley and Anderson Sports to release their final numbers (both had UCF 2nd and ahead of Alabama going into the title game).

However, according to these four fine pollsters, UCF is the national champs!

Roundtable - http://www.rtsratings.com/curCFBRetro.asp

M Cubed - http://mcubed.net/ncaaf/2017/index.shtml

MJS - http://sagedrive.com/mjs_standings/2017/summary.htm

ISR - http://football.kislanko.com/2017/ISR_current.html

Sadly for those folks, they only get to express their opinion about who is #1. They don't get to pronounce someone "national champion". If you search hard enough, you will always find a rating that doesn't take competition into account. If you play the Little Sisters of the Poor and their equivalent 12 times, you will be at the very top of those rankings - unless, of course, the good sisters beat you.

Some of those ratings are worse than others. But the thrust is that they pretty much only take into account whether you won or lost, and where the game was played. It's why I tend to disregard the Massey Composite rankings. They have too many of these outliers included in their data.